The invention relates to the technical field of apparatuses for dispensing paper wipes made of cellulose wadding, creped paper, or suchlike material, intended more particularly for wiping the hands of users, to the dispensing of toilet paper, and to the dispensing of paper towels. The pieces of paper may be in folded or unfolded form.
The Applicant has developed many patents on these apparatuses of the above type in automatic and semiautomatic versions for dispensing strips of paper taken from a loading reel.
The Applicant has also developed, in French Patent No. 2,746,781, a drum for dispensing a wiping material in which a selector device allows the length of dispensed material to be varied.
The embodiment of the selector device in the above French patent, while technically interesting, is still complicated to produce and has a high manufacturing cost.
The intended object of the invention was therefore to devise a new drum for dispensing the wiping material that would allow the strip of material dispensed to be cut to varied lengths in a simplified and more reliable configuration.
In accordance with a first feature, the drum for dispensing a wiping material in a dispensing apparatus with adjustment of the format and length of the dispensed material, the apparatus being of the type comprising a housing (2), a cover (3), a drum (10), and a cutter device (5) built into the drum and arranged longitudinally in a slot formed in the latter, characterized in that the drum (10) comprises a hub (11) defining in its center an annulus (11e) serving as the point of attachment and of adjustment of position of the cylinder part (16) of the drum, in variable positions defining a variation of the format of the strip in terms of the length of the material, and in that the cylinder part (16) of the drum is made in two parts capable of being moved away from one another by elastic deformation of one of the parts of the cylinder in order to define the circumference of the drum and the variation of the format, the said parts being lockable in position with respect to one another.
These features and others also will become clear in the remainder of the description.